Women who have delivered children or of an advanced age are more likely to suffer urinary incontinence because childbearing and age can cause muscles supporting the urethra to become over stretched and their elasticity to decrease. In some afflicted patients, an operation is performed to recover the elasticity of the muscle supporting the urethra by, for example, providing a support hole on a pelvis through which the muscle surrounding the urethra are lifted up. In addition to, or in combination with, such an operation, training for recovering the elasticity of the muscle surrounding the urethra can be provided.
For carrying out the operation properly, it is necessary to determine an extent of reduction in elasticity with respect to the muscle around the urethra and to define the degree of lifting up the muscle through the support hole suitable for recovery of the elasticity. In addition, it is also important to evaluate the degree of elasticity recovery after the operation. Still further, when the elasticity recovery training is provided, it is also necessary to evaluate the extent of elasticity reduction for the muscle surrounding the urethra and the effective recovery achieved by the training. Evaluation of the elasticity of the muscles surrounding the urethra has previously been determined by diagnosis such as manual palpation, which relies heavily on the experience and skill of the person performing the examination.
Although it is theoretically possible to directly measure elastic properties of surrounding muscle tissue by inserting a probe into the urethra without employing techniques such as palpation by the operator, in practice such probe insertion imposes an undesirable burden on a patient because of the narrowness of the urethra.
In consideration of the above, evaluation of the elasticity of the muscle around the urethra through a living body tissue inside a vaginal canal by inserting a probe into the vaginal canal has been considered, because the probe can be inserted through a vagina which is located in the immediate vicinity of the urethra and has a diameter of about 15 mm. However, because one function of the muscle surrounding the urethra resides in dilatation and contraction properties which provide dilatation and contraction of the urethra by an adequate elasticity, the evaluation cannot be sufficiently conducted by a general method such as a stress measurement or a strain measurement performed with respect to the tissue inside the vaginal canal.
Further, the extent of reduction in the muscle elasticity which causes urinary incontinence can not sufficiently be evaluated by a topical measurement such as measurement at one point inside the vaginal canal. The same is true for an evaluation of elasticity recovery after operation or during training. That is, it is impossible to evaluate which part of muscle has been recovered and which part of muscle has not been recovered.
For evaluating the functions of muscles surrounding the urethra, it is preferable that the extent of dilatation and contraction of a whole vagina is observed in real time by allowing the patient to “overstrain” or “relax” their muscles for example, but means appropriate for carrying out such observations have not been conceived.
In addition, for reflecting results of the training of the patient into a next training, it is desired to use an evaluation device, by which the patient can continuously conduct the training by themselves and can easily understand the degree of recovery at home.
The present invention advantageously provides a device for measuring elastic properties of living tissue which allows for real-time measurement of dilatation and contraction properties of the living tissue, and solves the problems noted above. The present invention further advantageously provides a device for measuring elastic properties of a living tissue by which dilatation and contraction properties of the living tissue can easily be understood.